No score and nine years ago a turkey was brought forth, living in St. Johns, a new sight, conceived in a pen, and dedicated to the holiday that all turkeys are eaten, was created to symbolize Thanksgiving. Now we are engaged in a great holiday tradition, testing whether that holiday, or any holiday so conceived and so dedicated to eating turkey can long endure. We are met on a great table for feasting of that holiday. We have come to dedicate a portion of that table, as a final resting place for those turkeys who here gave their lives that the Turkey of St. Johns might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should honor the memory of this fabled turkey.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this holiday. The brave turkeys, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated this holiday far above our poor power to add or detract to our celebrations. The world will little note, nor long remember what is said in this blog, but it can never forget that a turkey once lived in a pen in the front yard of a house in the St. Johns neighborhood.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work and the yearly reminders of this mythical turkey which lives in this blogger’s mind advancing thus far so nobly this memory. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great holiday remaining before us—that from these honored turkeys we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these turkeys shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new symbol of freedom—it was Ben Franklin’s first choice, and that free roaming penned turkeys of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Cold Turkey:
Portland Orbit 